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Long Reads

Is Populism Being Trumped?

The reactionary parochialism embraced by many voters in recent years has shaken political establishments and roiled markets. They needed it, but can policymakers build on recent signs of buyers’ remorse?

Is the populist tide going out? The last fortnight has given democrats everywhere reason to cheer – or at least to sleep a little better.

For starters, Donald Trump’s bid for the US presidency is being buried by a cascade of damning revelations, including that he has not paid any federal income tax for perhaps two decades, and that he feels entitled by his fame to assault women – call it droit de célébrité. Many Republican leaders have finally had enough, repudiating their party’s presidential nominee in an effort to preserve its House and Senate majorities.

In Hungary, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s anti-immigrant referendum failed to attract sufficient turnout. Orbán says that he will nonetheless seek to constitutionalize the result; but the fact that more than half of the electorate stayed home suggests that his Svengali-like hold on voters may be slipping.

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"Embellishing an assumption" - yes, I think you have put your finger on the reason why so much received wisdom grates like the sound of a knife scraped on a glass bottle (the worst sound for humans, according to research!).
It really helps to know exactly WHY it grates. Most of us aren't conscious of being logical, we just ARE logical without thinking about it. So we find it hard to pinpoint just why and how lack of logic upsets us so much. It seems to cause an emotional response in us - which is puzzling for such an apparently rational faculty.
Also it is possible that if those who are making grating sounds could understand where they have gone wrong in logical terms, they might be able to stop doing it - though I suppose this would be like asking an anglegrinder to sound good.

As with Phillipe Legrain you start with an assumption that democratic results that are not consistent with the interests of an overlapping set of Oligarchies, are "popularist" with that being a backhand swipe at Fascism and Xenophobia. You should start by establishing a logical argument rather than yet again embellishing an assumption - one which has become a theology amongst the ruling oligarchy of the EU.
By example take the period of D Cameron's UK "negotiation" with the EU. It coincided with forecasts from the EU that the UK would have 2/3 of its population increase and an extra 10 million people. It is this objective factual situation that triggered the Brexit result because there was a massive democratic mandate to not have services and housing stock swamped but no democratic means of achieving it - as was demonstrated when Mrs Merkel visited to make it clear she had power to decide but voters did not. When you add to that the responsibility for Merkels internal deflation policy which caused mass migration it because a constant source of amazement that contributors to project syndicate have the gall to attribute it to English Xenophobia and racism - remember Germany had 7 years exclusion from freedom of movement to diver Polish migration to the UK on its joining the EU, directly causing the demographic differences between the 2 countries - does that make German politicians the bigots or English ones? Please judge people on the facts not your own bias.

Excellent article, which deserves careful consideration; however, two perhaps minor but definitely valid observations are that, first, Opportunistic Populism a la Theresa May, with her awkward switch from her back seat driver approach to Brexit, to that of a front seat Formula One race driver, will surely cost the Brittons dearly, for the next half century, and second, that the atrocity of Ricardo Hausemann's suggestion that, under globalization, for Venezuela, the ends justify the means, supposedly because “Venezuela will need to restructure its existing debt,” which will be impossible without a strategy to undermine holdout creditors. Indeed, the absence of such a strategy might well preclude any “restructuring at all, which could mean chaos or even a failed state,” will certainly not reduce the cost of international financing for the country, but quite the contrary, for a very long time.

In addition, to add clarity to the Colombian electorate's anti-populist stance a la Alavaro Uribe on the unrealistic and dangerous Juan Manuel Santos' crede of "peace at any cost" was historically correct and judicially and soioeconomically justified and wise, suffice it to say that the rejected peace agreement shamed the victims of the 52-year Colombian holocaust and rewarded their unrepentant captors and abusers with unearned pardons, scandalous political franchises, and monetary stipends, and more.

The article clearly signals the chaotic state of the globe regarding politics, economics, and socioeconomic reality and trends, but does not suggest any fixes. It offers no uplifting vision or practical alternatives to its fulfillment.

My suggestion for an uplifting vision, and practical alternatives for its fulfillment are, firstly, Universal tax reform, a subject that has great appeal practically everywhere. The first of the links listed below presents a scheme that purports to symplify taxes by reducing their number to one, reduce government and corporate tax bureucracies and their costs, improve tax collection, guarrantee government spending effectiveness and transparency, and gradually eliminate the grievous socioeconomic inequality that is literally destroying America, in fact, The Americas and the globe. This is an opinion piece, certainly not an academic paper, and cuts to the chase.

The remaining links present related topics, particularly the tenth one, which goes beyond taxes into the more complex issue of how to bring together private and governmental resources, including multilateral, with simplicity, to effectively promote holistic and comprehensive development that is environmentally friendly in The American Hemisphere, a pattern that could be replicated along the Asia-Oceania and Europe-Africa Hemispheres.

There won't ever be a better - or more far-sighted - comment on all this than 2 books by Yale Law School professor Amy Chua. Perhaps it takes an outsider - a lawyer, with a legal mind - to stand back at look at the thing sensibly.
The first book was her 2002 "World On Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability".

The book sold well, but some academics were puzzled by it, and some were critical, saying that free markets and democracy were not the only cause of racial tensions across the globe. Chua, like most Chinese people, is above average polite, so it is easy to pretend she is saying something different if you don't like what she is saying. And of course liberal elites absolutely hated what she - one of them for goodness sake - was saying.

Chua's second book was "Day of Empire: How Hyperpowers Rise to Global Dominance - and Why They Fall". This rocked the boat even more - in fact it was so astonishing that many reviewers simply failed to mention the second half of the title "Why They Fall" and merely boasted that it proved that "the real key to acquiring and maintaining great power lies in the ability to attract and assimilate, rather than to coerce or intimidate". Yes, Amy Chua does say that - but she then says that the power acquired in this way always collapses because it has de-ethnicised itself, and hacked off its cultural roots. Ouch - a painful thing which is also too painful to even mention, it seems.

Populism is the materialization of a last natural means of expression by the masses to try and voice what they could not otherwise express. The system in place, which is not necessarily entirely bad but far from perfect, fosters marketing/cover-up vs. decision making, individualism vs. common good and short term vs. long term. A consequence is a focus on the wrong priorities. Populism is a last correction signal to the true issue: the acceleration of the world and loss of control that takes place.

People have ceded political control to the "technocrats"(let's call it that for now) for many years. For a while it went well, people built cities, took rides in airplanes, drove cars, watched more football, bought more shoes, etc.. and all seemingly went well. But then the math blew up like a LTC hedge, which allowed some viewers the chance to catch a glimpse of the inner workings of the puppeteers. This led to turmoil and crisis.
Now where this thing ends, no one knows. Will people find everlasting happiness with credit shopping, with forever watching football, or with theirfashionable flavor of identity politics. Or will they awaken from their stupor dissatisfied and vote for the first guy that shares in their dissatisfaction. Most of the people mentioned in this article can be categorized as the "first" of the populist agitators. Sure the ebb and flow may be temporarily moving away from the populists'
shores but if the "technocrats" do not quickly produce results the populist wave will return but only with more wrath and meaning.

What we are witnessing is the desperate last stand of ordinary people against the ruthless New Elite Agenda of "refeudalisation": the winding back of Modern Era values to restore the Elite's historic privileges. And like Elites throughout history, the new Elite are seeking to weave a cloak of virtue to conceal the nakedness of their self-interest, with Project Syndicate as their mouthpiece.

It is easy to forget that, stripped of its ephemera, human history up until the time of the Modern Era era was a story of aggressively narcissistic, machiavellian psychopaths competing (sometimes collaborating) to attain positions of power, then using that power to dominate and brutalise their fellow human beings. We know from the historical record that such psychopaths feel no remorse in wasting the lives of thousands - even millions - of people they regard as "their" Subjects.

In this behaviour, psychopathic rulers were abetted by "sycophants" - typically timid, less dominant males - who sought to promote their own survival and reproductive prospects by allying themselves with the dominant males. Articulate sycophants provide the "theology" of elitism, constructing elaborate justifications for the privilege of their patrons.

Historically, the ability of such Elites to dominate and brutalise others was limited by the capacity of individual human beings to kill each other, and therefore by the need to recruit and reward a circle of allies (a "praetorian guard") which could carry out such such enforcement.

If that long-standing behaviour seemed to change in the Modern Era it was not because the psychopaths woke up one morning and said, "Oh my God, is that the time!? Is it the Modern Era already? Quick. We'd better start enacting social reforms!"

Human psychology has not evolved. Evolution operates over a MUCH longer time frame. The psychopaths (and their sycophant supporters) haven't gone away.

All that happened in the Modern Era was a temporary change in the environment: the demands of the industrial economy made it expedient – for a time – for the rulers to make limited concessions to their Subjects.

The industrial state required the training of large numbers of Subjects to operate the complex – but not fully automated – machinery of industrial production. Having had so much invested in them, Subjects had value and their bargaining power relative to their rulers improved. In the extreme, they could withdraw their labour and quickly impose greater costs on the owners of capital than they themselves suffered.

Under such conditions, the optimal strategy for rulers (only after they had tried violent suppression and found it ineffective!) was to make certain limited concession to their Subjects. Thus we had the quintessential ideals of the Modern Era, culminating in the 20th century:

a) egalitarianism, the ideal that all people are entitled to the same basic opportunities irrespective of their ancestry;

b) democratisation, the ideal that Subjects are entitled to have some say in how they are governed; and

c) self-determination, the ideal that self-identifying communities are allowed to choose for themselves how they will govern themselves.

But, again, these concessions didn’t mean that the psychopaths had gone away. And there was never anything to say that the conditions of industrial production would last forever.

What we are now witnessing is the Elite’s response to the post-industrial world of AI and robotics.

No longer are large numbers of Subjects required to run complex but not fully automated machinery. Now it is small numbers of very highly trained technicians required to manage the robotic workforce. Small in number, they can easily be bought off, or better still reduced to the status of indentured workers through the weapon of crippling student debt.

As for the rest of humanity, they are now redundant or soon will be. Their rulers no longer need them. The earlier concessions are - as the saying goes - "inoperative".

To be sure, the masses may get employment of a kind, especially in providing personal services. But it will be employment in the "Uber Economy" of savage competition between workers with all economic rent flowing to the owners of the monopolistic market platforms.

And the Elite are responding precisely as one would expect an aggressively narcissistic, self-serving Elite to respond. They are relentlessly winding back any concessions hitherto made, while their sycophant economic theologians are busy trying to justify it as being for the “Greater Good”.

Inequality is quickly returning to its historical norm, as Piketty has documented. We are returning to a feudal state in which property is owned by the magnates and almost everyone else is reduced to the status of dependent serf.

As for democratisation, in most countries it never developed beyond "elective" government dominated by Elite parties. Moneyed interests and pressure groups found it a trivial exercise to subvert that.

To entrench their gains, they are taking ever more critical decisions out of the hands even of elective government: the privatisation of strategic monopolies, essential services and critical databases means that elected politicians are forced negotiate with private magnates on terms dictated by the private magnates.

And finally, self-determination has been eroded by the growth of opaque and unaccountable neo-empires (like the EU) and so-called “trade” agreements (which actually have little to do with trade and everything to do with signing away sovereign powers to unaccountable opaque committees of the Elite interests).

Elite theologians talk superciliously about the "end of borders" but do not be deceived. They do not intend to abolish ALL borders. They simply want to replace "national borders" (over which the mass of ordinary citizens might have had some control) with "private borders": Elite private property.

The Elite do not intend to rub shoulders with the Stinking Masses, the Riff-Raff, the Plebs. No! No! No! No! THEY retreat to their private mansions, their private country estates, their private campuses, their private gated communities, all surrounded by private borders marked with "KEEP OUT. Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted!" signs.

From there they sermonise piously on the supposed intolerance of those outside!! Hypocrites blind to their own hypocrisy.

On all fronts the trend is the same: the alienation of public rights - over which the citizens might have had some say - to Elite private interests.

At some point, the Elite may even decide that the continued existence of masses of redundant human beings is a threat to their own security.

The recent development of lethal weaponised robots shows where this will all end. Not only do the Elite not need workers. They don't even need many human members of the Praetorian Guard.

Remember that the individuals we are talking about here are not like the rest of us. They are aggressively narcissistic, machiavellian psychopaths with a strong appetite for attaining power and dominating others. Homo sapiens psychology has not evolved.

Had it been possible to establish genuine Democracy with the right of recall, veto, initiative and referendum there might have been some hope for the rest of the human race. THAT is why the theologians of Project Syndicate abhor Democracy in favour of the corrupt system of "elective" government.

Corrupt elective government provides no safeguards. It will prove no barrier to containing the psychopaths once the cost of pacification falls as a result of robotics.

You don’t need to be Einstein to see how this game will play out.

For most people it's not going to be a happy ending.

And the theologians of Project Syndicate will be cheering all the way.

Having been privileged to work as an investment banker in the field of privatisation, I have in my life been able to observe at close quarters agents from both business and politics and I can report that the rumours of psychopaths' extinction are "exaggerated"!

To the uninitiated, these people may appear normal and friendly, but one of the defining characteristics of psychopathy is "superficial charm". That's how they prey on others. Be not deceived. They would step over your still-warm body without missing a heartbeat if it lay between them and a dollar.

In developed countries the psychopaths' position has been strengthening over recent decades with the steady transfer of rights away from the public domain (where the mass of citizens might have had some influence) into private hands. In retrospect we can now see that the ideals of the Modern Era (the egalitarianism, democratisation and self-determination) were an historical anomaly.

In the absence of genuine Democracy, the system of "elective" government - with its legalised campaign bribery and revolving door jobs-for-the-boys - is wholly inadequate to constrain psychopathic agents.

Indeed as people like Nobel laureate James Buchanan have explained, the system of purely elective government has the perverse effect of "adversely selecting" the most aggressively narcissistic and machiavellian political agents. The present US election is an excellent example of Buchanan's hypothesis.

The timid, the naive and the sycophantic may cling to their fairy tales if they wish, but fairy tales will not save any of us from the impending holocaust.

You say human nature has not evolved, and I disagree. Cultural evolution is the extension of biological evolution and operates on a greatly accelerated pace. The monstrous psychopaths of history dont operate in a vacuum. They are the products of their time. I suggest that the lions share of atrocities in history is not the consequence of madmen but of leaders reflecting the views of a substantial portion of the population they lead. They are generally not pathological, but limited in their psychological understanding of others with dffering worldviews. Our finest literature and art reflects this limitation, and also shows a gradual evolution of human empathy along with advances in scientific understanding. As Steven Pinker wrote in a recent book, the current era, in spite of various wars around the world, is the most peaceful in human history.
If I were you, I'd be less concerned with aberant psychopaths and more interested in how well my neighbor relates to and empathizes with others of differing backgrounds and viewpoints. That will give you a much more useful sense of social progress than your coersion and subterfuge based account.

"I would suggest that the outcome of the election in 2 weeks is likely to demonstrate that a larger percentage of the population disagrees with these claims."

That's an excellent example of the "mandate fallacy", a staple of elitist philosophy. A preference expressed between two bundled sets of options cannot be used to infer a preference for any element of either bundle.

The simplest case is as follows:

a) Candidate or Party A claims to support Policy X and Policy Y;

b) Candidate or Party B claims to support Policy not-X and Policy not-Y; and

There is no possible means by which this policy preference may be reflected in a vote for either party or candidate. Conversely, a vote for either party or candidate cannot be used to infer support for either policy.

In practice, the number of policies vastly exceeds two.

Moreover, it is not only policies which are bundled. The single vote must also cover judgements on the ability of candidates to implement those policies (i.e. Executive capacity).

If some former Sanders supporters vote for candidate Clinton as the "lesser of two evils" (perhaps because they oppose having a overtly sexist President) this cannot be used to infer support for any or all of candidate Clinton's professed policies.

Moreover, it does not take into account collusion where both of the final candidates support a policy which a majority of the voters oppose (for example, continuance of the system of "elective" government in the absence of genuine Democracy).

Moreover, it does not take into account information asymmetry and dishonesty. For example, in the present election both candidates have professed opposition to further "free trade" agreements, but given their backgrounds it is plausible that BOTH are being dishonest in that profession!!

One can project one's own preferences onto the population based on the outcome of an election, but it's not a logical argument.

" The even LARGER point is to recognize that "popular uprisings" are a consequence of NON-democratic government which (as Gilens and Page have shown) governs on behalf of the wealthy and the well-organized, ignoring the wishes of the mass of citizens."

In the U.S. a popular uprising has taken place on the far right. It's champion and current leader is Donald Trump. The core of this movement represents around 30-40% of the population of the country. Its leadership does indeed claim that an elite and non-representative group of wealthy business leaders, politicians and media organizations are colluding to deprive the people of their rightful voice. I would suggest that the outcome of the election in 2 weeks is likely to demonstrate that a larger percentage of the population disagrees with these claims.

My interpretation of the origins of this far right American populism is that, instead of there being a power grab on the part of a small and powerful Elite to deprive the people of their rightful participation , the real conflict is between two cultures within the U.S., two peoples identifying with distinctly different worldviews.

In other words, this is not a war of the people against a tyrannical leadership. It's a civil war. The Far right blames a corrupt government for the encouragement of unwanted and illegal immigrants, for the welcoming of terroristic refugees, for the celebration of a fascistic political correctness and a globalist and imperialist foreign policy. It blames this same government for ignoring the rights of religious groups to exercise their right of refusal against homosexual culture.

The opposing side of this civil war is only elite if you consider a relatively well educated urban, multicultural population to constitute an elite.
This cosmopolitan America, which is now the majority of the population, celebrates what the far right populists abhor. It encourages immigration, welcomes refugees, prefers racial diversity to homogeneity and recognizes the existence of implicit racial bias in the culture, and believes n the protection of the civil rights of the lgbtq community.

Based on the recent events in America, I can confidently conclude that, yes, there are indeed populist movements whose grievances have in reality nothing to do with a suppression of their due process, but instead are the product of a cultural rift .

Because one cannot always depend on an alienated population to be able to recognize whether their alienation is due to the repressive actions of a corrupt establishment or a falling out with respect to an equally substantial community,
populist revolts run the inherent risk of illiberalism.

As for democratisation, in most countries it never developed beyond "elective" government dominated by Elite parties. Moneyed interests and pressure groups found it a trivial exercise to subvert that. Under the mantra of "Rule of Law, Not of Men", the Elite judges proclaim the inalienable right of ALL people to prostitute government through campaign bribery and jobs for the boys . Like Anatole France, we are left to marvel at that Majestic Equality of the Law which permits both the rich man and the poor to bribe his politicians.

Populism is not ineluctably linked to demagoguery -- it is an expression of the will of the people. To understand it as something that must be "Attacked on All Fronts" and that "It is a battle that must be waged on many fronts: economic, electoral, legal, cultural, and, where appropriate, military" is in essence a declaration of war on the people. Does Project Syndicate really endorse such a position? Should the supporters of Bernie Sanders in the United States, or Jeremy Corbyn in Britain -- both populists by most people's definition -- start preparing themselves for the prospect of being forcibly repressed in "economic, electoral, legal, cultural, and, where appropriate, military" terms?

To write "But, however challenging that battle may be, what is increasingly clear is that it must be joined without delay" strikes me is a call for war on the people NOW. Is that really the view of the authors here?

In my view, Project Syndicate should be ashamed of this bit of (perhaps revealing?) editorializing. Governments that aspire to serve the people -- rather than insisting that the people serve their governments -- need to rethink this view if they in fact hold it, and invest their energy not in making war on their people. but in understanding them.

I think we make make a mistake when we conflate a political idea (populism) with a political personality (Donald Trump and others). There are moderate populists on both the right and the left that have a legitimate case to make and deserve a respectful hearing.

If I were inclined to join battle, it would be against the individuals and organizations that set out knowingly to exploit the people's fears and anger for their own purposes. And that said, it does seem to me that the organized right has been more guilty of this than the left since the end of WW2.

"Certain illiberal tendencies," Mr. Soffer, can be detected in the establishment that brands "populists" as a threat that must be met in "a battle that must be be waged on many fronts."

Would you be more comfortable if Project Syndicate had, instead of using the word 'populism' generally, specified far right populisms which, following the lead of individuals like Donald Trump, threaten to censure or limit organs of the press, suggest without basis that voting is rigged on a national scale, attempt to restrict legal rights of minorities, and indicate the intention of interferring with other established rules of democratic process?
Because I think this was their intended focus, not the right of a population to revolt against tyrannical government.

". . . the larger point isnt to pick sides in ones preferred form of populism, but to recognize that by their nature , popular uprisings run the risk of a blindness toward due process, respect for the mnority voice and nuanced debate." The even LARGER point is to recognise that "popular uprisings" are a consequence of NON-democratic government which (as Gilens and Page have shown) governs on behalf of the wealthy and the well-organised, ignoring the wishes of the mass of citizens.

As economics Nobel laureate James Buchanan observed, the corrupt system of "elective" government - in the absence of Democracy - has the perverse effect of "adversely selecting" aggressively narcissistic individuals:

"[S]uppose that a monopoly right is to be auctioned; whom will we predict to be the highest bidder? Surely we can presume that the person who intends to exploit the monopoly power most fully, the one for whom the expected profit is highest, will be among the highest bidders for the franchise. In the same way, positions of political power will tend to attract those persons who place higher values on the possession of such power. These persons will tend to be the highest bidders in the allocation of political offices. . . . Is there any presumption that political rent seeking will ultimately allocate offices to the ‘best’ persons? Is there not the overwhelming presumption that offices will be secured by those who value power most highly and who seek to use such power of discretion in the furtherance of their personal projects, be these moral or otherwise? Genuine public-interest motivations may exist and may even be widespread, but are these motivations sufficiently passionate to stimulate people to fight for political office, to compete with those whose passions include the desire to wield power over others?" (James Buchanan and Geoffrey Brennan, "The Reason of Rules", Cambridge University Press, 1985, p64.)

Nowhere do we see this more clearly than in Switzerland where the Federal cabinet is multipartisan, comprising members of all the main parties across the political spectrum working collegiately.

Of course, Elitist will always argue things like "Switzerland adopted XYZ policy which I believe is wrong."

But if the criterion for choosing a system of government was whether of not it produced policies which one personally agreed with, then clearly the only acceptable form of government would be an autocracy with oneself as the autocrat.

And unless one can produce a "Charter from Heaven" nominating yourself as autocrat, there is no reason to believe that one's own policy preferences ought to be privileged over those of other people.

I should add while I doubt it is Bernie Sander's or Jeremy Corbyn's brands of populism that the Project Syndicate editors have in mind, certain illiberal tendencies can be pointed to in their movements, but on a much lesser scale than what has been taking place on the far right.
I guess the larger point isnt to pick sides in ones preferred form of populism, but to recognize that by their nature , popular uprisings run the risk of a blindness toward due process, respect for the mnority voice and nuanced debate.

Oh sure, populism is a wonderfully benign thing if you choose to understand it via its most generic definition. However, the specific forms that it has taken in the 20th and now the 21st century are mostly anything but benign. Let me take the liberty of refining the definition of populism as I think it pertains to Project Syndicate's discussion. Current populist movements around the world have in common not simply the right of regular people to have control over their government rather than a small group of political insiders or a wealthy elite.
Current populism involves one segment of the population attempting , in the name of 'freedom and democracy of all the people' to restrict the rights of other segments, including freedom of the press, based on xenophobic and racist perceptions. Giving Trump's deplorables a voice is a wonderful thing as long as they don't use it to deny others their voice.

Donald Trump’s recently announced tariffs on imported steel and aluminum have raised fears that his administration will roll back the rules-based free-trade system that has facilitated global commerce since World War II.

But a closer examination of the history of US trade policy shows that Trump’s protectionist gambits are neither new, nor likely to have a lasting effect.

For the time being, concrete evidence of policy success in countries like China and India may well be the most effective way to buttress the case for applying non-Western perspectives to national development strategies.

But, in the longer term, non-Western thinkers will need to translate their ideas into testable models and theories.

Tens of thousands of mothers and newborns die from preventable causes related to pregnancy and childbirth every year, which is why maternal and perinatal mortality is still one of world’s most daunting public-health challenges.

But recent research finds that a comprehensive systems-based approach provides reason for hope.